It's interesting to see how rapidly identity politics is changing debate when there is now a safe place for academics to submit and discuss ideas anonymously. My view on the perceived need for this is that many students no longer understand what academia is. While they're no-platforming and arguing about pronouns the right are stealing all their money. Silly sods.

Science generally, and particularly social science, has just gone down the tubes.

When I was studying psychology there was a definite attempt to introduce some academic rigor into the subject. That seems to have been an all-too-brief period of common sense. In the social sciences generally, the scientific method has been explicitly discarded in favour of what they call an "evidence-based" approach. This looks superficially like science but is actually closer to the ad-hoc methods used by technologists to get something working. It embraces cherry-picking of evidence and ignores the time-honoured traditions of seeking out evidence that destroys your thesis.

I can't help wondering if this has to some extent been driven by a flood of women into the sciences; as JP likes to point out, women score high on "agreeableness" traits, and the hard-nosed philosophy that underpins scientific progress (conflict and disagreement is a critical part of it) doesn't sit well with the average female personality. Women tend to look for agreement and consensus, but the Popperian approach depends on the exact opposite.